


When You Left Me

by talkfastauburn



Series: you don’t have to disappear [2]
Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Crying, Death, Established Relationship, Gore, Grief/Mourning, Hospitals, M/M, Sad, discussion of blood and death, maybe? - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:34:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23870161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkfastauburn/pseuds/talkfastauburn
Summary: Twenty minutes ago, he was planning an engagement party for Luke’s older brother.But now, he’s sitting in a hospital identifying the body of the love of his life.or,The details behind the loss of Michael Clifford.
Relationships: Michael Clifford/Ashton Irwin
Series: you don’t have to disappear [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1720201
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	When You Left Me

**Author's Note:**

> this is like a prequel for a work of mine called Cologne! it’s in a series with this so make sure to read that <3

Luke is freaking out, and the party doesn’t start until Wednesday. 

It’s Sunday.

“Luke! Calm down! Jack won’t care about if all of the biscuits are the same size, he just likes biscuits. Sit down and help me pick the cake design!”

Luke finally say down, a stressed look on his face.

“I’m sorry, it’s just that Jack has been wanting to propose to Celeste for two whole years now and it’s finally going to happen on Wednesday.” 

“I get that but you’re going to pace holes into my floor and Michael just replaced the tiles.”

A few minutes went by, and they’d finally decided on a nice pale green for the cake decorations when Ashton’s phone began to ring.

“Who is it?”

Ashton shrugged as he answered the call. 

“Hello?” 

There was some rustling from the other end of the line before he heard the man speak. “Are you Ashton Irwin?” 

The rest of the conversation seemed like a blur for Ashton. He was praying that he’d wake up in Michael’s arms and this would all be a dream.

“What happened?”

Ashton didn’t answer, he just stood up and began gathering his things. 

“Ashton? What is it?”

Ashton just cried. “Michael.”

-

Twenty minutes ago, he was planning an engagement party for Luke’s older brother.

But now, he’s sitting in a hospital identifying the body of the love of his life. 

When he arrived to the hospital with Luke following behind him, he spoke to the secretary who gave him the most sympathetic look he’d ever seen before being directed towards a doctor standing by a closed door.

Before he knew it, he was standing outside of a room that said _MORGUE_ in bold writing. 

“No. No, no, no. I can’t go in there. You can’t expect me to-”

The doctor placed a hand on his shoulder, giving him a look identical to that of the man at the front desk. “Just breathe. I know this is hard but we need your help.”

Ashton took a deep breath and nodded as the doctor began opening the door. 

He began crying on the spot. 

Michael was basically unrecognizable, his face covered in blood and bruises and burns. If it wasn’t for the shock of green hair on his head and the tattoos on his hands and arms, Ashton wouldn’t be able to tell who he was.

He had been praying to anyone who would listen that maybe he’d get there and it would be some other poor bloke whose body he’d have to look at, but now here he was, standing in a morgue looking at his dead fiancé.

“Oh, Michael...”

He threw a hand over his mouth, sobs ripping through his body. “Baby, no.”

He walked closer, and reached a hand out, gently touching the half burnt hair on the top of his head. He watched as a tear dripped from face and landed on the table right next to Michael’s head.

“Mr. Irwin, I’m so sorry but we have to ask you leave soon.”

“Can I get a fee minutes?” He looked up at the doctors desperately. “It’s just, he’s my fiancé and he left earlier to go to the store and I wasn’t expecting this to be what I saw when I got here.”

The doctors nodded and stepped from the room. 

Ashton walked around the table, pulling the white sheet down past Michael’s waist and whimpering when he saw what Michael was wearing. It’s his favorite black tank top paired with some black and white striped skinny jeans. There were hole burned into the shirt and the white stripes of the jeans were basically as black as the rest of Michael’s outfit.

Ashton grabbed Michael’s hand, crying when he saw the tattoos on his arms split by various cuts and blisters. The bracelets on his wrist were just hanging there, and Ashton wanted to make sure he could get those before Michael was taken away from him. 

He saw Michael’s engagement ring on his hand, and he held his hand up. He began crying harder. He couldn’t bare to see his Michael like this anymore. 

One of the doctors soon came back in and frowned when she saw Ashton holding Michael’s hand in his, the ring slightly blackened from ash. “You can take the ring.”

Ashton looked up and then quickly back down as he began pulling the ring from his fiancé’s finger. 

“Can— can I take his bracelets too?” He wiped his nose as he saw the woman nodding, and quickly began to untie the various bracelets from Michael’s arm. 

“I’m so sorry, Mikey. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you. I’m so sorry. I love you so much. Please— please come back to me, Mike. Please.”

Ashton felt more and more tears fall from his eyes as he begged the body on the table to just _wake up, goddammit._

He felt his legs begin to give out and he had to grab the side of the table before he fell to the ground. “Mikey, please. I’m sorry. Please, please wake up. Please. I don’t want you gone. Please, baby, please.”

He gripped Michael’s hand tightly, only releasing it when he heard the doctor’s voice. “Ashton, I’m so sorry but we have to ask you to leave. We have to take care of him.” 

Ashton’s eyes widened. “No, I- I can’t leave him. I can’t. You can’t ask me to go. Please.” 

Ashton saw a tear welling up in the corner of her eye, but she quickly wiped it away. “Ashton, I’m so sorry but you can’t stay here any longer. Is there anything else of his you want? Maybe his shoes? They aren’t as damaged as he clothing. His jeans are a little burned but we can get those to you too.” 

Ashton shook his head. He didn’t know if he could deal with knowing he had the shoes Michael _died_ in. 

“Okay. That’s alright. Can you please come out here, now?”

Ashton nodded. “Let me say goodbye, please.”

He grabbed Michael’s hand again, watching as a tear fell onto it. “I love you so much, Mikey. You’re my everything and I don’t know how I’ll deal with losing you. Luke is in the w—waiting room right now, and he doesn’t know what’s happening. I feel like I don’t know ei—either. I keep asking myself whether or not this is a dre— a dream. I just wanna wake up and be with you. I’m so sorry, Mike. I love you. But I have to leave. And you left too soon. We were supposed to get married in three months, Mikey. Only three. And now we can’t because the universe hates us. H—how am I going to tell all of our guests that there’s no wedding to attend anymore? How am I gonna tell your _parents?_ I’m so sorry, Mikey.”

Ashton doesn’t know how much longer he rambled before the doctor finally began ushering him from the room and back down the hallway. As soon as he saw Luke pacing, he ran to him and wrapped his body tightly around him. 

“He’s gone, Luke. He’s fucking gone. My Michael is dead and I don’t know why this had to happen. He was laying on that table covered in burns and bruises and _blood,_ there was so much blood. Luke, he’s dead.”

**Author's Note:**

> this was really bad!!!!! aha
> 
> i might make a third part that’s michael’s pov but that would make me cry while writing it so ,,, maybe just like the funeral and how ashton coped for the first few weeks bc cologne takes place about 2 years after so what if i did two weeks????
> 
> let me know!
> 
> \- auburn


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